After such kind words last week, I forced myself to sit through three more hours (two whole episodes!) of Fox's excruciating reality turd ON THE LOT.

Note to Mark Burnett: Maybe you should try calling it SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DIRECT?

Apparently, I was in rare company. According to Variety's Rick Kissell:

"Based on preliminary same-day Nielsen nationals for Monday, "On the Lot" averaged a 1.3 rating/4 share in adults 18-49 and 2.9 million viewers overall from 8 to 10 p.m., peaking with about 3.1 million from 8:30 to 9.

For those keeping score, that's fifth place, y'all. Or as I like to call it, Yankee territory.

Where have you Gone Chelsea Handler?

This means, so few people watched, that no one noticed the "jump cut" from episode 2 to 3, wherein an entire challenge vanished. No one noticed that the missing show is nowhere to be found, even on the "Cutting Room Floor" section of the OTL Web site. (Note to the cool kids: OTL is what we die hard fans have come to call the show...) No one noticed that that they pulled a "Darrin Stephens" with hosts. No one was there to ask the question--with so much behind the scenes turmoil--how is it possible that the show is so boring?

Why not turn the cameras around, and shoot the making train wreck--Anatomy of a Reality Show Disaster? It's gotta be more interesting than what they are showing.

Kissell continues, "Those numbers left the net behind repeats on CBS as well as first run programming on ABC, NBC and Univision(!); Fox also may have trailed a cabler or two in the 9 o'clock hour." (My italics and graphics added)

Pitch idea for cha cha cha: En el Backlot (Copyright (c) A.M.P.A.S.)

That this "highly anticipated" show was beat down by network repeats and Spanish language programming does not bode well for the future of OTL I have my doubts as to whether we'll ever get to see that weird Candian kid win the million dollar deal. Or, in Variety-speak, "if numbers remain at this level -- which are low even by summer standards--the net could be forced to yell "Cut!"

Zach shoots down an alien spaceship, which falls faster than OTL's ratings.